The Atomic Sea

by Jack Conner

  “There’s more news. You might find this more agreeable. The Black Sect just assassinated another Collossum priest last week, right in Lusterqal.”

  He smiled at the thought of rebellion in the capital of Octung. “I wonder who they are, the Black Sect.”

  “You and everyone else.”

  “Some say they’re blasphemers or heretics against the Collossum.”

  “They’re saboteurs, anyway. And apparently assassins.”

  “Any enemy of Octung is a friend of ours, I suppose, even if they’re other Octunggen,” he said.

  The skeet shoot went on, and Avery allowed himself to enjoy it. He especially enjoyed a more festive Sheridan. He rarely got to see her like this.

  In time, they returned to her cabin, and to his surprise she pounced on him as soon as he closed the door. She kissed him frantically on the neck and began tearing off his shirt almost before he’d closed the door. Without speaking, she flung him down on the bed and climbed astride him. He’d never seen her so energetic or ... well, passionate. She sweated and cursed as she ground her hips against his, and as she whipped her head her short sweaty hair streamed out to catch the light. She was so impassioned that for a moment he entertained the hope that she would let him finish inside her. But no. After she flung herself off him she handed him the customary towel.

  Not long after that she dismissed him. Buttoning his torn shirt as he made his way through the officer’s quarters, his gaze strayed to a certain locked door. Hambry’s chambers.

  The officer’s main room was dark and quiet, but Lt. Hinis threw darts at a board with her one remaining arm, her left, cursing as she did. She was evidently trying to relearn basic coordination.

  “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but could you tell me who occupies Commander Hambry’s quarters now?” Avery asked.

  She threw one more dart and grimaced. “No one’s there, Doc,” she said. “Cap’n’s orders are to leave it be, and what with half the officers dead there’s no one needs it anyway.”

  “And yet she specifically requested it be left alone?”

  Hinis nodded, bored. She crossed to the dart board and jerked out her widely-scattered projectiles one by one.

  “That seems odd to me,” Avery said. “Almost ... sentimental.”

  Hinis chuckled. “The Captain’s about as sentimental as a boot.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  Hinis wasn’t worried. She offered him half the darts. “Wanna game?”

  “Maybe later.”

  Frowning, Avery departed the officers’ quarters. His mind flashed back to that fateful day, remembering how Hambry had only ventured outside after his conversation with the captain. It can’t be, Avery thought. Sheridan was as loyal as they came. If anything, she was too loyal. Hambry had been acting on his own, it must be. It must.

  And yet ...

  Three days passed, and repair work progressed round-the-clock on the Maul and her sisters so that they wouldn’t slow the convoy down. On the third day, Sheridan came to Avery, this time while he was taking a walk on deck, surveying the work being done.

  “Join me tonight,” she said.

  “So soon?” He allowed a hint of self-satisfaction to enter his voice.

  She only smiled and continued down the deck, leaving him with the sea. Her insatiability puzzled him. She rarely requested two trysts in so short a time. Of course, it did make sense if—

  “Damn,” he said.

  He descended into the whalers’ quarters, which stank and were strewn with filthy clothes, beer bottles and various debris.

  “Where’s Janx?” he asked Corlus.

  Corlus, the oldest whaler aboard at fifty-five, was grooming his long silver beard with a crusty whale-bone comb. He flicked his head to a certain door. “In ‘is cabin. But I wouldn’t advise goin’ in.”

  Avery banged on the door. No one answered. He kept banging. At last the door cracked, and a sweaty and red-faced Salussa glared at him.

  “Yeah, what?” Sweat dripped from the gold rings that decorated her cheek-scar.

  Avery blinked. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Hells, I didn’t think you even liked Janx.”

  “Who says I do? But he’s got the biggest—”

  “Who is it, Sal?” barked someone from deeper in the cabin.

  “See for yourself.” A naked Salussa opened the door wider, affording Avery an all-too-complete view of her. She was solidly packed, with meaty arms and tight pectorals. Her waist was like a tree-trunk, but with more scars. A white scar bisected her right nipple. Tattoos swirled around her navel.

  Over her shoulder Avery could see an equally naked Janx lumbering into view. He was even more muscled, scarred and tattooed than Salussa, and he did not look pleased to see Avery.

  “What is it, Doc?”

  Avery looked from Salussa to Janx, then back. “Madam, I would like to speak with Janx alone.”

  She opened her mouth. “How dare you—”

  “It’ll only be for a moment.”

  “You gonna let him get away with this?” she asked Janx.

  Janx shifted his glower from her to Avery. “What the hell ya think you’re doin’, Doc? We were kinda in the middle of somethin’.”

  “Again, it will only take a moment.” Pushing past Salussa, Avery stepped into the cabin to give his words more weight. “Ship’s business, I’m afraid.”

  Fuming, Salussa gathered her clothes. “Don’t ever think of callin’ me again, you son of a bitch,” she called over her shoulder. She slammed the door behind her with such force that Avery jumped.

  He turned to Janx. “I am sorry—”

  Janx laughed. “You did me a favor, Doc.”

  Avery tried not to look at Janx’s member as the huge whaler turned about and meandered to his tangled bed. The cabin stank of sweat, filthy laundry, alcohol and illegal chemicals. “How so?” Avery asked, not sure he wanted to know.

  Janx found some drawers and pulled them on, for which Avery was grateful. “If I’d-a finished her off, I’d never gotten ridda her.”

  Avery nodded sagely. “It was all I could do.”

  Janx’s good humor dropped as soon as he turned about. “This had better be good, Doc.”

  Avery tugged at his mustache absently. For a moment he pondered how to phrase what he needed to say.

  Janx collapsed on the bed, located a bottle and commenced drinking. “Go on,” he said, punctuating the command with a burp. “Spit it out or get out. If I hurry, I can still flail the whale before it sounds, if’n ya get me meaning.”

  Avery forced himself to smile. “Yes. Now. Um. Is any of what you said the other night true? Even the littlest bit?”

  Janx smiled broadly. “Every word of it, Doc. I’d stake me life on it.”

  “Be that as it may. Do you actually have any experience ... burgling?”

  “What, thievin’? Sure as shit. I stole more loot from more lords than the government.”

  Avery sighed. “Good. Because I need you to teach me how to pick a lock.”

  * * *

  Gasping, Captain Sheridan flopped back on the bed. A lazy smile stretched across her face. “I’m impressed,” she said. “All those walks must really be doing you some good.”

  Avery knew his energy had little to do with exercise. It was fear that drove him. Fear at what he would find in Commander Hambry’s cabin. Fear at getting caught.

  For once she did not rise for her customary glass of post-coital whiskey, and despite himself Avery felt a flush of pride. A moment of silence passed, and the ship creaked and settled around them. The crimson lights that issued from the fluid of the alchemical lantern swayed slowly, making the cabin seem as though it were plunged underwater in some hellish otherworld.

  “You know,” Sheridan said, speaking thoughtfully, “if I were made Admiral ... I could promote you. You would not be a simple ship’s doctor but the medical officer for an entire fleet.”

  That caught him by surprise. “We would be on the flagsh
ip together.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Is that not agreeable to you?”

  “No. Captain. Certainly, it is. It just caught me off-guard. I did not think you and I ...”

  She laughed. “Don’t take it the wrong way, Doctor.”

  “Yes. Of course.” The thought of being the captain’s pet lover disgusted Avery, or at least part of him. Still, there was another part that was warmed by the intention behind her words, or what he supposed was behind them. Might the captain not be a touch sentimental after all?

  She rose from the bed and strode, naked and shining with sweat, to the bar. Unasked, he joined her there, and they shared a drink in silence. The silence became awkward. And yet she didn’t draw away from him. He could almost imagine there was some sort of connection between them, a connection beyond the physical.

  He knew the second drink was his invitation to leave, but she didn’t suggest his withdrawal.

  The whiskey still burning his throat, he dressed slowly, and she watched him with an unreadable expression. “You know, Doctor, things will be different when we reach home. As an admiral, I’ll be expected to operate with a certain amount of discretion.”

  “I understand.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I won’t see you. Until I’m given a ship, it’s possible I could get you assigned to the care of your mermaid, or at least appointed to the committee tasked with studying her.”

  He had been lacing his shoes. Now he stopped in mid-lace. “I would like that.”

  “Of course,” she went on, fetching a half-smoked cigar and lighting up, “that would mean you need to be open to studying her ... in whatever manner necessary.”

  His chest felt tight. “Yes,” he managed. “I understand.”

  “Good,” she said. “Think about that as you go.”

  That was his dismissal. Half chagrined, half relieved at the captain’s return to form, he finished dressing and left her cabin. He turned one last time before he did. He saw Sheridan lit by lantern-light, naked and gleaming, cigar clenched in her jaws, grab a fencing sword from the wall and slice it experimentally through the air, surely as a prelude to practice. The swish-swish of the sword reached his ears, and the door slammed shut.

  Feeling strange—about the captain, about everything—Avery moved through the darkness of the officers’ quarters blindly, stumbling as he went. Alchemical lanterns lit the gloom, but he had always found that alchemical lamps did not spread light normally. Their sort of light burned brightly but in a contained sphere, as if hoarding the light against the darkness. The lanterns burned in different colors—red, green, blue—creating different pockets of illumination. This late at night, with the rocking of the ship beneath his feet and with no one else about, it felt to Avery that he moved through a different world—a deserted ship, perhaps, or one of Janx’s ghost ships.

  Bumping his shins and stubbing his toes, he found the door to Hambry’s cabin. He removed the two picks Janx had given him—the whaler said he never went anywhere without them—and knelt before the lock.

  Janx had told him that this sort of lock, a simple cabin keyhole, was among the easiest in the world to open, and yet Avery fumbled and fumbled with it, scraping the lock so that it squealed, which sent shudders down his spine, dropping a pick, until at last, miraculously, as if delivered by one of the kraken-gods of the deep, the door swung open. Avery wiped sweat from his brow, took a steadying breath, stood, his knees creaking, and entered the darkness that had been Hambry’s living quarters.

  He located a lantern and lit it. Purplish light flooded out, lazily probing at the dark corners of the cabin.

  Avery didn’t know what he was looking for exactly, so he looked through everything. Going as quietly as he could, he tossed the bed, searched the insides of the mattress, tore through the cabinets, checked the bottoms of drawers, hunted for secret compartments to chests.

  Nothing.

  “Shit.” His heart beat fast. He had to hurry. At any moment some officer wandering to the head would see light beneath Hambry’s door, and that could only end badly.

  He checked behind paintings, checked under the rug, peeled off the labels from the two wine bottles to eye the backs of them. Nothing.

  What was he looking for?

  Some connection, he reminded himself, some concrete connection between Hambry and Sheridan, something that would prove they were both traitors and spies, something that would prove Sheridan had dispatched Hambry to deliver the floating message-in-a-tube to the black waters of the Atomic Sea, there to be scooped up by Octunggen mariners and deciphered. It was the only explanation. If Hambry was a spy, than Sheridan must be, too. Hambry would not have ventured out onto the raging deck in his condition, not unless he’d been ordered to by a captain whose presence would be too obvious, would be remarked upon. She could not do it herself, so she needed him to. That’s why she had come to Hambry in the medical bay, why she had whispered urgently to him in the privacy of their corner. They were traitors. They had to be. Spies for Octung.

  And, in the unlikely event that Avery was wrong, something he actually hoped for, there could be evidence linking Hambry with someone besides the captain, exonerating Sheridan and implicating the true traitor. Either way, somewhere in this cabin there must be files, tubes, decryption keys, incriminating evidence of some sort ... something.

  There was nothing. Avery looked everywhere he could think of, but Hambry, or Sheridan, had been too careful.

  Frustrated, Avery made his way to the sink and splashed water on his face. He had to get out of here. He’d been in Hambry’s cabin too long. And even if he’d found evidence, who could he tell? Surely Sheridan, or whoever the traitor was, would dispose of it before they reached land—and dispose of him along with it.

  Just as he started to leave, his eyes fell on something, and he let out a startled breath.

  A wave of disappointment took him, along with something else. Fingers shaking, he reached through the thick purple light and picked up the small box that rested in its mounting, in plain sight, in a place of honor, on Hambry’s sink, where his gaze would fall on it every day and remind him of his place.

  Avery blinked sweat out of his eyes and opened the box. And there, lying on black velvet, just as he’d known it would be, was the connection he was looking for, if not the proof, and the explanation why Sheridan had called on him more than usual since Hambry’s death.

  It was an empty shotgun cartridge, the sort Sheridan kept as mementoes of her skeet competitions, and the sort of thing, evidently, that she gifted to lovers.

  Avery cursed. It was true. Sheridan was a spy. There was no reason for her and Hambry to keep their affair secret. It was well known that Sheridan had numerous lovers, and nothing was considered amiss about that. No one would have lifted an eyebrow had their affair been known. No, the only reason Avery could think of for the deception was that if people didn’t know, they wouldn’t associate the two together in any way other than professional. Such secrecy could only mean Sheridan didn’t want to draw attention to their affair, and that meant she and Hambry had something to hide.

  Damn you, Jessryl. Why? How did they turn you?

  Sweating, certain now, he renewed his search. There must be something, Hambry had to have missed something. If Avery didn’t find proof, Sheridan would continue—

  He found it in Hambry’s shoes. The Commander’s small shoe rack contained a pair of dress shoes, and Avery, noticing a weight difference between the two, inspected them carefully, then used one of the Commander’s knives to pry the soles open, revealing hidden compartments in both.

  Tightly-folded letters crammed the spaces, stained by age and time and water that had leaked in through the cracks. Quickly Avery scanned the letters, seeing loose, neat handwriting, snatching a purple phrase here and there—It has been too long, my dearest—Why must we keep this fire between us in the shadows?—and finally settled on one. Breathless, he read, surprised at Hambry’s gushing pen: My dear Jessryl, I know yo
u said to write nothing down, but I cannot keep this inside me any longer. I must get it out or burst. I pray you will forgive me. Trust that I will make sure it is never discovered. Yet this thing we do, this mission, this holy quest, it fires my mind and body. It is the aether on which I thrive, on which I live, just like your kisses and your hot breaths on my neck. When you told me of my divine blood, how I was pure and must cleave to the old ways, the old gods, I felt struck by lightning, like I had been blind from birth till that one shining day. Now I live only to prove the worthiness of my blood, our blood, and to give glory to the Collossum.

  Avery stared, and his hands shook.

  Blinking sweat out of his eyes, he folded the papers and replaced them in the hidden compartments. He felt both elated and crushed. It was true. Captain Jessryl Sheridan was a traitor. He wanted to vomit.

  What should he do now? He couldn’t risk taking the letters back to his cabin, where someone might find them. And what if they were found by someone loyal to Sheridan? If she had one agent on the Maul, she might have others. Also, he couldn’t stash them in some obscure location around the ship for the same reason, as well as for the reasons that they might be ruined by weather or nested in by some creature.

  With a groan, he realized what he would have to do. He would have to leave the letters here. Of course, if he did that there was the possibility Sheridan would discover and remove them, but he supposed it was a risk he would have to take. Once on land, he would have the authorities here instantly, and Sheridan’s charade would be over.

  * * *

  Distant gunfire jerked Avery from bed—loud, forceful and heavy. The guns of warships.

  Battle.

  Feeling his skin draw tight across his body, Avery slipped on his clothes and picked his way toward the medical bay. Sailors jostled all around him, frantic and pale. He reached the med bay and ordered it prepped for use.